When people typically think of the smoking industry, the first images that come to mind are of massive tobacco companies dominating the market. The latter half of this decade, however, has seen the rise of an unexpected challenger: e-cigarette startups. While e-cigarettes themselves have been around for much of the 2000s, the past few years […]

The Rise (and Potential Fall) of JUUL Labs and Vaping Startups

When people typically think of the smoking industry, the first images that come to mind are of massive tobacco companies dominating the market. The latter half of this decade, however, has seen the rise of an unexpected challenger: e-cigarette startups. While e-cigarettes themselves have been around for much of the 2000s, the past few years have seen the explosion of vaping, thanks, in large part, to the emergence of JUUL Labs. Between 2015 and 2019, JUUL Labs has transformed from a little-known vaping startup into the third biggest unicorn startup of 2019 – experiencing experiencing year-over-year growth of around 700%. Valued at $50bn, it is currently the largest retail e-cigarette brand in the US and has a market share of over 75%.

What has JUUL done that Big Tobacco hasn’t been able to before?

Image. JUUL presents itself sleeker, sexier and more discreet than other vapes on the market

Variety of flavours. Wide-ranging fruity and “exotic” flavours appeal to the younger audience

The success of this new approach to e-cigarettes has prompted the rise of a number of e-cigarette startups mimicking JUUL’s design, branding and usability. NJOY and Blu are now dominant players in the market, with NJOY currently seeking a valuation of $5bn and using sales to compete with JUUL. And there are many more in both the US and, excitingly, the UK.

Does 2019/2020 spell the downfall of JUUL?

Once viewed as the ‘safe alternative’ to cigarettes, e-cigarettes are now coming under fire for a multitude of things:

Safety. As of yet, little is known about vaping’s health impacts, especially long-term. However, increasing evidence suggests that vaping is actually very bad for you. A 2019 study by the Stanford School of Medicine found that the e-liquids in JUULs could radically increase a person’s risk of heart disease because they destroy the endothelial cells that line the interior of blood vessels. The Director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute Dr. Joseph Wu notes that “this study clearly shows that e-cigarettes are not a safe alternative to traditional cigarettes”. This finding appears to be supported by the jump in vaping-related illnesses. To date, there have been at least 450 reported cases of vaping-related respiratory illnesses and 7 deaths

Encouraging young people to smoke. Increasing research is finding that there is a ‘vaping epidemic’ amongst teenagers, perhaps spurred because the exotic, differently flavoured vaping fluids appeal to high schooler’s unused to tobacco’s harsh taste. Many of these teenagers have never smoked before and, through JUULing, are becoming addicted to nicotine. The danger is that these teenagers then turn to smoking

Stock options and equity are words you may see in the ‘career perks’ section of many Work in Startups job descriptions. What does this perk actually mean for you, a potential startup job-holder? Here is our run-down all about startup equity as an employee. […]

Startup Equity: Give me my options!

Stock options and equity are words you may see in the ‘career perks’ section of many Work in Startups job descriptions. What does this perk actually mean for you, a potential startup job-holder? Here is our run-down all about startup equity as an employee.

Mini-Glossary

Option: an agreement to purchase a share in a company at a future point in time for a set price.

Vest: the period over which the options issued are earned by you. Once vested they can generally not be taken away from you unless you chose not to exercise.

Exercise: The action of buying the share off the company for the option price. You pay the company cash and then become a shareholder.

A Liquidity Event: This is the time when you get to cash in your stock (often an IPO or an exit).

What to look for in equity

If equity and stock options are something you want in a startup job then it is worth finding out a few pieces of information either when looking for a role or at the point of interview:

Quantity: how much of the company do you or will you own? Pretty self explanatory!

Type: do you have stock options or restricted stock?

Stock Options – this is the right to buy shares at a predetermined price (or “strike price”). You then exercise these at a time of your choosing and acquire ownership of the shares.

Restricted Stock – the stock is granted (given) to you under conditions, like vesting…

Vesting: how long will it take, and under what conditions, do you assume all the shares you are entitled to. More often than not: you don’t accrue your shares in the first year of employment and then gradually gain them over the next three years (although this is different in each startup). Bare in mind that if you switch jobs you may not have acquired your whole equity package!

Exit Strategy – does the company plan to go public, and if so, when? If the startup fails or plans to never sell then you may not see the cash behind the stock.

So: what have I got to lose?

Should you look for stock options when considering a startup role? In short: it depends.

Obviously, the value of your shares depend on the success of the company as a whole, so make sure you are investing your time (and money) into a project you believe in. This is particularly true for co-founding roles where equity is the main form of compensation. We also do not recommend applying for a role unless there is an interesting day-to-day and it benefits your career long term.

There are so many roles that are both interesting and reward you with awesome benefits like equity on Work in Startups. Give them a look!

This week we’re bringing you a piece on how to promote accessibility and inclusion in tech. Specifically voice recognition technology and how some big names are creating products for all. As usual we have a roundup of this week’s hottest jobs (too)! […]

Weekly Brief: Are you ready to lend a hear?

Voice-recognition software and smart assistants are becoming life (and energy) savers, but not all of us get as great an experience as others. Particularly those for whom English is a second language, who have speech impediments, or just plain mumble! Here in blighty, the good ol’ BBC is looking to uphold our weird and wonderful accents in a field largely catered toward ‘American English’ (whatever that is!) They plan to launch a rival smart assistant (‘Beeb’) that will supposedly understand even the most tricky regional British accent and obscurest patter. And this is not as out-of-the-blue as it may seem – YouGov reported that smart speakers are two-thirds less accurate for those who are not “white and male”. This is partly because speakers are largely developed by men (diversity in tech rears its ugly head yet again) and partly because AI finds deeper vocal tones easier to understand. Luckily Mozilla has a pretty cool solution for this: a crowd sourced data set of diverse voices. Common Voice aims to revitalise voice-recognition tech with entries from a diverse range of contributors. Feel free to contribute yourself (remember to add your demographic data), we certainly did! Maybe you’ll hear the dulcet tones of the Work in Startups team in your exploration?

This week on the weekly brief we are discussing sweaty sensors, mind control and smart gloves. We’re exploring the interesting developments in the tech behind sensors. Plus: giving you a shortlist of our favourite startup jobs from the site this week! […]

Weekly Brief: We’ve got a Sixth Sensor

Facebook unveiled their Brain API Beta at F8, aiming to “integrate people’s thoughts into the next generation of apps”. Given the less-than-discreet reputation Facebook has earned, this is understandably putting some noses out of joint (would you trust them with your thoughts?) But putting privacy or morality to one side (*fingers firmly in ears*), we instead want to look at the awesome tech behind the project. Their team of scientists and developers are treading new ground in both BioTech implants and “neural machine learning”. Thinking as positively as possible, the tech could completely revolutionise treatment plans for neurological disorders. Seems a noble enough cause?

Another group using sensors to potentially tackle the way we treat debilitating disease (and pick up weapons in VR video games) are the team behind the ‘Stretch-Sensing Soft Glove.’ This glove accurately captures intricate hand movements without the need for optical tracking (watch them show off the product and absolutely slam their competitors below!) Meanwhile teams at UC Berkeley and Stanford have both developed similarly thin sensors to track even more biometric data about us “glamorously” through our sweat! Shows just how versatile and open this field is. So, whether you’re prepared to deal with the ickier privacy concerns of neural implants, or just want your sensors to be plain sticky, it looks like this tech will be a major part of future wellness and health. Really it’s just common sense(or)!

Whether you want to hit the ground running when you start that fantastic new startup job (sourced through Work in Startups of course). Or just want to recap the basics, this one if for you! In our fantastic startup learning and development programme, we have been discussing how to nail the basics. This week: email! We thought it would be a great thing to share with our lovely blog-readers, as email communication is still at the heart of the way we communicate. […]

How to write a good email

Whether you want to hit the ground running when you start that fantastic new startup job (sourced through Work in Startups of course). Or just want to recap the basics, this one if for you!

In our fantastic startup learning and development programme, we have been discussing how to nail the basics. This week: email! We thought it would be a great thing to share with our lovely blog-readers, as email communication is still at the heart of the way we communicate.

Here’s how to make sure the structure and content of your email is perfect:

First, is email the best communication? Would it be better to have a quick chat or meeting? Could it be pinged over via your preferred messaging service? More often than not, an email is an unobtrusive way of getting on someone’s to-do list, but if something’s more urgent or quick then do consider your options.

Subject line – always include a clear but brief subject header in your email so the recipient can prioritise. Don’t be afraid to hit them with a ‘high priority’ flag where appropriate!

Call to action – starting off with a “call to action” (who needs to do what and when) it really helps to cut to the chase. This is particularly helpful when lots of people are cc’d in!

If you work in a UK startup you’re likely to be very busy, so help your colleague out by keeping it punchy! You can always say “see more detail below” and then include below your sign-off if helpful!

This isn’t an invitation to link in everyone at the company! Only send the email to relevant individuals as you can always forward an email later.

The body – keep it concise and relevant. This is not the time for waffle and sharing your life story. General rule of thumb: don’t go over 200 words and ask yourself, “if I read this on a phone, would I have to scroll?”

Sometime you have to expand, we recommend making use of links and attaching documents. We love a bullet point… as you can see… make use of them in your emails!

Tone – we recommend adapting to suit the audience (but always be polite). You can, of course, be a bit less formal with a colleague that you know well!

Remember your salutations, not to get all GCSE English on you but it does matter in a formal context. If you need to brush-up, or perhaps English is not your mother tongue, this is a comprehensive guide to salutation. This is also quite helpful when choosing how to end an email.

Requests – if you need something from your recipient (i.e. a new hire, training, information or support for something) try to cover the following:

What you are asking for

Why you are asking for it

When you need it

What is the benefit

How much it will cost

We see lots of different email addresses at Work in Startups and we have some feedback: candidates we’re looking at you! Make sure your personal jobseeker email address is appropriate and contains a variation on your full name (you can retire that jazzy MSN handle you set up when you were 11!) That way you can start firing out the applications to all the amazing jobs on our site!

We have lots of training at Work in Startups; from basics like email-writing to the bigger issues like mindfulness in the workplace. It is one of the many exciting perks we will be offering our new Sales and Operations Intern! Check out the vacancy if you like the sound of working with us!

We want our startup community to get the best out of our site. We also want candidates to be able to easily see what they’re applying to. So killing two birds with one stone we have produced this helpful guide (You’re welcome!) Good startup ad copy is a must for everyone! Read on about how to perfect your ads to maximise response-rate! […]

The *Perfect* Work in Startups Ad

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that Work in Startups has had a bit of work done over the last few weeks. Now everything is shiny and new, we wanted to help you make the ads you post look as good as possible!

Given that our team have read hundreds and thousands of UK startup job ads, we think we’ve come up with the recipe to entice your perfect candidate, starting with…

About the Company

Up front, we think its always a good idea to include a brief overview of your startup and a look into what you do. Right at the beginning, if you can boast about your mission, milestones, awards, funding rounds etc, then you’ll (hopefully) have the candidate hooked. It’s all about selling yourself in the first 5 seconds! We also cannot recommend enough a “what we’re building section” including company goals and what everyone is working toward.

Remember to include a link to your company website in your admin account so the candidate can click through to your website easily (also its a free link for you!)

About the Role

The most successful ads on our site clearly display what the candidate will be doing on a daily basis. We recommend spelling out:

Specifically what they will be building/working on

Who they will be reporting to

Tasks and responsibilities they will be regularly undertaking

Things they might do in a few months time as they learn new startups skills

Categories

Now seems like a good time to acquaint you with some shiny new filters we introduced. We now have all the filters your little heart can dream of! Honourable mention to our new filters: Ops and Finance, Customer Support, Data and Product, and Other Jobs. These have been included to help candidates find startup jobs best suited to them, so make sure you pick the category that best matches your role!

General tip: By all means show personality and humour in your job ad (it always makes us smile when we see an eye-catching title) but be aware that candidates like to know at a glance what they’re applying to. E.g. “Sales and Marketing Superstar” is infinitely better than “[Your startup name] Superstar”.

Experience

There is an emerging trend in our favourite job ads on Work in Startups for experience; must have and nice-to have. We recommend splitting your experience expectations of the candidate into these two categories because it gives the candidate a better idea of the skill level required of them. We also think it’s a nice way to help them prepare for the interview (to save you time).

For example, you could say that a new junior developer must have 2+ years experience with Python, but a degree in computer science is a nice-to have addition. Easy.

Benefits and Company Particulars

We really recommend including all the fantastic perks your startup has to offer – now is the chance to show off that amazing co-working space in Shoreditch, team social calendar, or your unlimited flat white budget.

The key things to include in company particulars meanwhile (aside from the fun stuff) are any bits of salary information, potential for stock options (if any) and your startup office location. You can include details on hours too if they’re a bit irregular, but we recommend not bothering if they’re fairly standard or if the role is sufficiently senior – can make you come across as a bit too corporate.

Equal Opportunities:

We encourage all our employer community to promote equal opportunity practices in their HR and recruitment. Lots of our candidates have fed-back that they look for companies that value these principles when applying. The EOC has lots of information on these practices based on the Equalities Act 2010, both are worth a read if you want to promote diversity in your recruitment.

Application Information

We really recommend specifying what you expect your candidate to include in their application as there are many options available:

CV

Covering Letter

Essay or Application Questions

GitHub stuff (if a developer job)

Portfolio (if a designer job)

Their own website or projects they have created

Linkedin profile

We’ve found this helps weed out applicants who ‘spam apply’.

Note: if you want to have a chat about specifics or even partnerships, drop our team an email at contact@workinstartups – they will be able to help with bespoke options.

We look forward to reading your perfected ads, but if you’re struggling or want feedback feel free to contact the team! And finally don’t forget to pick a promotion if you want 4x the application number through! Happy Hiring!

Here is a write up of this weeks newsletter. Today we were looking at potential banana extinction and how BioTech, AI and CRISPR can be used to help! As always you can get this content straight to your inbox on our weekly newsletter – we always try to include some fun and interesting tech news! Go bananas! […]

Weekly Brief: Banana Fungus Slip Slidin’ AwayAI

How can artificial intelligence save the world’s favourite fruit?

Tropical Race 4 – don’t worry we aren’t talking about that purple hurricane game every kid seem to be playing this summer! Better yet: crop destroying fungus. Fusarium Oxysporum has come to public attention after it hit land in Colombia. Short banana PSA: a different strain of Fusarium almost obliterated bananas as we knew them 30 years ago, leaving the more resistant ‘Cavendish’ as top banana. This strain is already present in Asia and can survive dormant in the soil for many years. It is expected to sweep through Latin America, where 99% of the world’s crop is grown, decimating bananas left and right. But all is not lost! An international team is using AI to detect diseases in bananas, developing tech that could be deployed on an international scale to contain and control the epidemic. Opening up the GMO debate, CRISPR and BioTech options have also been suggested to modify bananas (or even the disease itself) to sidestep a potential biological catastrophe. Without getting all Swedish child environmentalist on you, it seems like a good time to think about how to promote biodiversity within the confines of practical and ecological production needs. Thankfully BioTech is positioned to lead this attack and protect our precious bananas! Let the fights in offices across the nation continue over (objectively) the best fruit.